Morris Sans® font family

Morris Sans is a newly revised and extended version of a small geometric family of typefaces originally produced by Morris Fuller Benton in 1930 for ATF. His initial design consisted of an alphabet of squared capital letters with a unique twist that characterized its appearance: corners with rounded exteriors and right-angle interiors. The types were intended for use in the fine print found on business cards, banking or financial forms, and contracts. But over the ensuing decades, this design became a popular element in all sorts of design environments, and several foundries revived the typeface in digital form. Since digital fonts are bicameral, with slots for both upper and lowercase letters, new cuts of the type opted filled the lowercase slots with small caps.

In 2006, Linotype commissioned its own version of the typeface-an extension for 21st century use. Under the advisement of Linotype's type director Akira Kobayashi, Dan Reynolds redrew the uppercase and added an original lowercase for the first time. Additionally, a number of extras were brought into the fonts, including six figure styles (tabular and proportional lining figures, tabular and proportional oldstyle figures, and special tabular and proportional small cap" figures). Small caps, which have become an iconic element over time, are accessible in each font as an OpenType feature. To differentiate this version from the original, Linotype's new family is named Morris Sans, in honor of Morris Fuller Benton.

All fonts in the Morris Sans family are OpenType Com fonts; they include a character set capable of setting 48 European languages that employ the Roman alphabet, including all Central and Eastern Europe languages, those from the Baltics, and Turkish. This glyph coverage extends to the small caps as well.

Morris Sans is a wide typeface, especially in its regular widths; the condensed faces set a more conventional line of text. The new lowercase letters are less geometric than the uppercase, except for those that share the same basic forms (e.g., c, o, and s). Instead of following this geometric trend, the new lowercase tends to strengthen the humanist elements that were present in several characters from the original type, including the uppercase D and the figures 5, 6, and 9. Morris Sans also sports a number of glyphic flares, like the stroke found on the original uppercase Q.

Morris Sans is a clean, modern design best suited for headlines, advertising, posters, expressive signage (especially on storefronts), and corporate identity work."

Case-Sensitive Forms

Tag: case

Function: Shifts various punctuation marks up to a position that works better with all-capital sequences or sets of lining figures; also changes oldstyle figures to lining figures. By default, glyphs in a text face are designed to work with lowercase characters. Some characters should be shifted vertically to fit the higher visual center of all-capital or lining text. Also, lining figures are the same height (or close to it) as capitals, and fit much better with all-capital text. The user selects a block of text and applies this feature. The dashes, bracketing characters, guillemet quotes and the like shift up to match the capitals, and oldstyle figures change to lining figures.

Fractions

Tag: frac

Function: Replaces figures separated by a slash with 'common' (diagonal) fractions. The user enters 3/4 in a recipe and gets the threequarters fraction.

Standard Ligatures

Tag: liga

Function: Replaces a sequence of glyphs with a single glyph which is preferred for typographic purposes. This feature covers the ligatures which the designer/manufacturer judges should be used in normal conditions. The glyph for ffl replaces the sequence of glyphs f f l.

Lining Figures

Tag: lnum

Function: This feature changes selected figures from oldstyle to the default lining form. The user invokes this feature in order to get lining figures, which fit better with all-capital text. Various characters designed to be used with figures may also be covered by this feature. In cases where lining figures are the default form, this feature would undo previous substitutions.

Old Style Figures

Tag: onum

Function: This feature changes selected figures from the default lining style to oldstyle form. The user invokes this feature to get oldstyle figures, which fit better into the flow of normal upper- and lowercase text. Various characters designed to be used with figures may also have oldstyle versions.

Ordinals

Tag: ordn

Function: Replaces default alphabetic glyphs with the corresponding ordinal forms for use after figures. One exception to the follows-a-figure rule is the numero character (U+2116), which is actually a ligature substitution, but is best accessed through this feature. The user applies this feature to turn 2.o into 2.o (abbreviation for secundo).

Proportional Figures

Tag: pnum

Function: Replaces figure glyphs set on uniform (tabular) widths with corresponding glyphs set on glyph-specific (proportional) widths. Tabular widths will generally be the default, but this cannot be safely assumed. Of course this feature would not be present in monospaced designs. The user may apply this feature to get even spacing for lining figures used as dates in an all-cap headline.

Superscript

Tag: sups

Function: Replaces lining or oldstyle figures with superior figures (primarily for footnote indication), and replaces lowercase letters with superior letters (primarily for abbreviated French titles). The application can use this feature to automatically access the superior figures (more legible than scaled figures) for footnotes, or the user can apply it to Mssr to get the classic form.

Small Capitals From Capitals

Tag: c2sc

Function: Small Capitals From Capitals

Small Capitals

Tag: smcp

Function: This feature turns lowercase characters into small capitals. This corresponds to the common SC font layout. It is generally used for display lines set in Large & small caps, such as titles. Forms related to small capitals, such as oldstyle figures, may be included. The user enters text as mixed capitals and lowercase, and gets Large & small cap text.

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Tag: dpng

Ornaments

Tag: ornm

Function: This is a dual-function feature, which uses two input methods to give the user access to ornament glyphs (e.g. fleurons, dingbats and border elements) in the font. One method replaces the bullet character with a selection from the full set of available ornaments; the other replaces specific "lower ASCII" characters with ornaments assigned to them. The first approach supports the general or browsing user; the second supports the power user. The user inputs qwwwwwwwwwe to form the top of a flourished box in Adobe Caslon, or inputs the bullet character, then chooses the thistle dingbat.

Discretionary Ligatures

Tag: dlig

Function: Replaces a sequence of glyphs with a single glyph which is preferred for typographic purposes. This feature covers those ligatures which may be used for special effect, at the user's preference. The glyph for ct replaces the sequence of glyphs c t, or U+322E (Kanji ligature for "Friday") replaces the sequence U+91D1 U+66DC U+65E5.

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Morris Sans® Std Light Condensedis also contained in the following products

Linotype Originals Library

Morris Sans® Complete Family Pack

Other families by the same designer

Mountain

Malabar®

Carter Sans™

Demos® Next

Malabar® eText

Morris Sans is a trademark of Monotype GmbH registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and may be registered in certain other jurisdictions.